College football fan or not, odds are you’ve heard about the sexual
abuse scandal that has rocked Penn State over the last couple of weeks.
In case you missed it, Jerry Sandusky, a 67 year-old former assistant
football coach and founder of The Second Mile, originally a group home
for at-risk boys and now a charity, was arrested and charged (after a
three-year investigation) with 40 criminal counts for allegedly sexually
abusing at least eight boys over a 15-year period.
In the fall-out since his arrest, Penn State athletic director Tim
Curley and Senior Vice President for Finance and Business Gary Schultz
have resigned and been criminally charged. Long-time head football coach
Joe Paterno and university president Graham Spanier have been fired and
assistant football coach Mike McQueary has been placed on
administrative leave.
The abuse of the eight victims in this case dates back to the early
1990’s. It wasn’t until 1998, after an 11 year-old boy was dropped off
at home with wet hair after showering with Sandusky, that the first
police reports were filed. Sandusky admitted to the boy’s mother later
on that he had showered with her son (and with other boys) and promised
never to do it again. The case was eventually closed and no criminal
charges filed.
In 2000, a janitor caught Sandusky in the showers performing oral
sex on another victim. He did nothing to stop the assault but
immediately reported what he saw to other janitorial staff including the
supervisor. The supervisor told the janitor who he should report to but
the witnessing janitor was a temp worker and failed to make the report.
The police were never contacted.
In 2002, McQueary, who was then a graduate assistant at Penn State,
walked into the locker room and witnessed Sandusky raping an
approximately 10-year old boy in the showers. McQueary did nothing to
stop the attack but instead went home and told his father (McQueary
later stated that when he left the locker room, the attack had been
stopped.)
The next morning, McQueary reported the rape to Paterno who reported
the rape to Curley. Later on in the month, McQueary was questioned by
Curley and Schulz. McQueary was never questioned by anyone else. Curley
later reported to him that Sandusky’s locker room keys were taken from
him and that they had alerted the Second Mile. Not a single person
contacted the police.
In 2008, yet another victim’s mother reports to her son’s school
that he has been sexually assaulted by Sandusky. The school contacted
the police department and Sandusky was subsequently barred from the
school district. In 2009 an investigation was finally launched. It
wasn’t until November 2011 that Sandusky was finally arrested. It took
nearly 13 years after the first report for him to be stopped.
As a sexual assault victim’s advocate, mother, and simply as a human
being, this story makes my blood boil! Besides the obvious outrage at
Sandusky, the failure by several adults to stop a child molester was
just as outrageous. I knew I wanted to publicly address this situation
but I was struggling to know where to begin. Should I write about how
child molesters seek out positions that give them easy access to kids?
Do I write about how institutions are masters at protecting the
institution and not the people hurt by it? Should I toss out some
statistics like “93% of children that are sexually abused know their
abuser?” Child safety tips? How to report a sexual assault? How society
enables abusers? Or maybe I could talk about the devastating effects of
childhood sexual abuse? The possibilities were endless! It took spending
some time teaching first graders what to do if somebody tries to hurt
them to make it a little clearer for me.
We teach our children to tell someone, to find somebody to believe
them, to find an adult to trust if they are sexually abused. Therein
lies the problem- as adults we fail-time and time again-to do the right
thing for our children when it comes to sexual abuse and it’s aftermath.
While Penn State is a failure of epic proportions by adults to do the
right thing, in our own communities we fail our children in the same way
every single day.
We fail our children when we refuse to believe them when they
finally report abuse. We fail our children when we refuse to believe
that our spouses, grandparents, brothers, uncles, neighbors, and friends
could commit sexual crimes against our children. We fail our children
when we make it so difficult for them after they do report abuse that
they often times change their story so the adults in their life are no
longer upset. We fail our children when they trust us to protect them
from harm and we don’t. We fail our children when we don’t trust that
nagging feeling in our gut when something just doesn’t seem right about a
person or a situation. We fail our children-time and time again-
because it’s easier to believe that childhood sexual abuse happens in
communities other than our own.
And while it’s hard to believe that there are adults out there that
harm our children in the most horrific of ways, it’s even more difficult
to believe when the abuser is a person we may know and respect, even
more so when it’s a person we may love. Regardless, as adults there is
really not an excuse good enough for failing to report child sexual
abuse, no matter who the abuser is. There really isn’t an excuse good
enough for not believing our children.
All the players in the Penn State scandal failed to do the right
thing for Sandusky’s victims. Sadly, but not unexpectedly, since the
allegations have arisen more victims have come forward. Stories of
sexual abuse by Sandusky are now dating back to the 1970’s. We can only
speculate how many children Sandusky has abused over the years. We can
only speculate how many victims could have been spared if somebody would
have stepped up and done the right thing years ago. As a society we
need to stop failing our children- their lives and well-being depend on
it.
